Metro News & Reviews

Transportation headlines, Wednesday, Dec. 16

I’m back from a few days of intense study of the water quantity content of snowflakes in the Eastern Sierra and found all sorts of goodies in this morning’s transportation headlines, compiled by the Metro library.

If you’re looking to ease your brain into the workday, I would start with the New York Times story on an iPhone app that claims to make it easier to walk and text at the same time. The reporter sounds dubious. I am, too. I almost walked in front of a Rapid bus last year while walking and texting and I’m quite sure the text (probably something along the lines of “I luv coffee!!!”) was not worth sacrificing my life over.

So there’s this new “smart” bike wheel that stores energy created by using the brakes and then can help the bike climb a hill or go faster, according to CNET. It premiered this week in Copenhagen, which makes sense given the city’s reputation as being one of the bike friendliest places in Europe and the world. Of course, the smart wheel is attached to a bike that can accomodate an iPhone with an app telling you about speed and direction, just in case you can’t figure that out for yourself.

I’m a big fan of one-way streets. But you should read this very smart piece in Governing about cities that revived downtown streets by taking down the one-way signs, painting a double yellow stripe down the middle and returning them to two-way status. The bottom line: more potential customers — in the form of motorists — for businesses along these streets. The story also has this fascinating kernal: a lot of streets were converted to one-way after World War II by civil defense planners trying to speed up escape routes for citizens fleeing atomic bombs.